


Loosing you

by blank_ghost



Series: S=K log W [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Hurt, M/M, no comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:07:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blank_ghost/pseuds/blank_ghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The doors open and the scent of leather, metal and oil rush into the elevator with him, a warm blanket that conjures memories of one genius idea involving the hood of a car before they’re scatted by pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loosing you

  
    If he was home, back on Asgard he’d have abandoned himself to his rooms by now, holed up in the warm dark depths where he could rest away his troubles but he’s not home anymore. He’s not been home in years, the passage of time long enough that his memories of the golden place has dulled, loosing the edge.   
  
    Returning to Midgard after invading it, being forced by his father’s hand into joining the Avengers. So long ago that what was once bitter, now it’s just a numb fact that has brought him to the place in life he’s at now.   
  
    He has friends now, real friends. His oaf of an adopted brother, so that can be counted as family. And someone who loves him as deeply and dearly as the mad engineer is capable of.   
  
    Not that any of that matters at the moment, he’s still searching for a hole to crawl into and hide away from the world. Driven to baser instinct, far beyond rational level, by the pain.  
  
    “Is anyone in the garage?”   
  
    “No sir.”  
  
    Good. It’s cavernous and dark and full of corners that he can crawl into and sleep away his illness. Slipping past the com room and its cheerful noise, someone’s watching TV, someone else is shouting about the choice in channels. Neither Rogers nor Natasha mention him as he tucks himself into the corner of the elevator and descends down.   
  
    The last night’s mission had gone unwell for all of them; Tony still sprawled out in the bed sleeping off the lasting effects of pain medication for the ugly marks that mapped out his back. He’d been hit hard and gone down against a building harder. The suit was good at protecting the mortal, but metal and engineering only did so much in the face of the odd villain that had true power.   
  
    Even Loki himself didn’t fair as well as he’d acted, his insides radiated a hot pain that matched the ache that bloomed between his temples every time anything brighter than a dull glow graced his eyes.   
    Stark/Avengers tower is a damningly bright place more often than not.   
  
    “Jarvis, Dim the lights fifty percent please.” He demands weakly, shielding his eyes from the other fifty percent with his hand as he leans against the elevator wall, the trip short as he descends several floors to garage level.   
  
    The doors open and the scent of leather, metal and oil rush into the elevator with him, a warm blanket that conjures memories of one genius idea involving the hood of a car before they’re scatted by pain. The lights turning on at an equal dimness. Pushing himself away from the elevator wall is a Herculean task that leaves him sapped of nearly all his strength, walking across the room stealing away what is left.   
  
    His legs shaking, his muscles feel like soft clay and his joints lined in sandpaper as he sinks helplessly to the floor near one of Tony’s flame red cars, making it no further to a corner to hide in. His coat tails pooling around his body as he slumps against the car’s cold metal side. The tactical chill only intensifies the tremble of muscles that he’d been fighting off, turning them to full blow visible shakes.   
  
    “Sir, if I may, you seem unwell. Can I contact Dr. Banner for you? Or perhaps Tony?”   
  
    “No.” He groans out, sliding till his side is against the cold ground and drawing his knees up to his chest. Trying to fend of the angry monster that’s tearing his insides into bleeding ribbons of agony. “It will pass.”   
  
    Gods above, let it pass.   
  
    The haze of pain like a tide that pulls him down and under the black depths of a numbing ocean, that parts only as he wakes slowly from it.  
  
    Voices and sounds swim around him. The sounds having colors and tastes that leave his mind a splintered ruin. Auroras of mellow blue and purple are punctuated by sharp notes that splash red though his mind, a steady beat of something that comes across as a not pleasant sound somewhere very close. The smells and tastes that rot on his tongue are chemical and overpowering.   
  
    Colors melting into words like so much graffiti in a downtown subway. Unless you know the langue it’s all colorful gibberish. It should be concerning how hard it is for him to decipher everything around him.  
  
    “He’s coming back around, someone want to get Tony?”   
  
    “Thor’s still out with Hawk.”  
  
    “That’s fine. Get Tony, he’s probably at the bar in the rec room. Fuck. If he’s too drunk maybe don’t bring him back here. You’ve got to make the call.”  
  
    “Yeah. Okay. No belligerent drunken idiot.”  
  
    “I’m never that drunk.”   
  
    He struggles through a gulf of cotton and darkness like emerging from under a wet blanket, neither warm nor very comforting. His eyelids held shut like someone had taken the effort to tie his lashes together. It’s almost not even worth the effort to open them, the room overly bright and blurry, taking on a swimming double vision of itself before things start to straiten out.   
  
    The unceasing bothersome noise near his head is actually a heart monitor. How very curious.   
  
    Banner is looking doctor professional at his bedside, hair messed, flecks of blood dried on his bare arms and over his dress shirt like something bad has happened and he didn’t take the time to throw on a surgical gown. Rogers just looks tired and maybe a little green around the gills. Tony though is wearing that blank look that Loki’s learned to associate with trauma, car accidents, and Widow PMS-ing.   
  
    “Why am I here?” He asks, or at least he feels his lips move and his throat ach desert dry and a ruin of pain. They look at him like he’s not speaking English, or at least not coherent English. Maybe he’s not.   
  
    Tony’s eyes darken and he jerks his head quickly to the door, a silent command that Bruce and Steve are more than willing to take; scrambling from the room like it’s on fire. Stark watches silent and still as the door closes with a hiss and leaves them in them alone in the empty operating theater, that damming heart monitor still beeping merrily away.   
  
    The mortal is not making eye contact, not avoiding it overly, just his eyes scan over everything, and his eyebrows knit in the middle, the frown making him look as old as he real is.   
  
    “You’re… mad.” Loki tries again with speaking; working especially hard to make sure his words come out right. Even in his own ears he sounds like a drunk trying not to sound drunk.   
  
    He makes the mistake of trying to sit up, his up till now numb body coming to life in a harmony of chaotic pain. Sucking in a hiss and falling back to the table beneath him he concentrates on breathing; each breath a lick of flame down his throat, his abdomen a network of live wire nerves each one as angry as the man in the room with him.   
  
    “Who? Me? Mad? Now why, Loki? Why would I have any need to be angry? Lover going off to the garage to die like an animal alone. No real reason to be mad at all. Kind of thought we we‘re past the whole ‘fuck my life' stage of our relationship. Apparently not. We do shit different on Asgard. ”  
  
    Tony’s voice cuts though the pain filled fog that threatens to pull him back under into unconsciousness again. Bitter and sharp the mortal spit’s the words like acid and when Loki opens his eyes again, swimming in the mists of a watery world Tony’s brown eyes are as black as the night with ire.   
  
    “No. Loki. I have no right to possibly be mad at you.”   
  
    “Wh-what?” He groans, swallowing, trying to find relief in the melting and reshaping world around him, something to ground himself with by as Tony remains untouchable. His mind still so many shattered bits of glass, he’s beginning to come to the conclusion it’s from drugs.  
  
    “Bruce just spent the last four hours up to his elbows in your inners.” Tony says his voice suddenly detached as he strides around the table and jabs at the screen till the heart monitor finally silences. “If not for Jarvis being so sweet and monitoring you down there, you’d be dead by now. If I paid him, I‘d give him a raise.”   
  
    He shakes his head slowly no, trying to fight for more facts than his spotty memory are giving him, groaning softly. “No.”  
  
    “No?” Tony questions, propping his hip against the table. So close but far enough away it might as well be miles.   
  
    “I… No. I was- I needed sleep.”   
  
    “Yeah. And you left the bedroom and went down to the basement to do it because that’s what normal people do.” Tony grunts and shifts way, the movements fast and violent as he grabs a stool and drags it across the floor to sit by the tableside. Still not touching, arms crossed over his chest and blocking out the arc’s soothing glow.  
  
    “I… hurt.”   
  
    Tony’s lips are a thin line when Loki looks over to him; he’s holding back his temper so hard that his knuckles are white against his biceps and jaw bunched as he grits his teeth. “Why the fuck did you go down there?” He says slowly, controlled to the point of detachment.   
  
    “I hurt.”   
  
    “And you turned away from the people who could help you, your friends. Fuck Loki. ME! Fuck you. Fuck this shit.” Tony swears as what ever small control he had on his emotions is gone standing to his feet, the stool falling to the floor in a crash of metal. His hands a shocking jolt of warmth as he grabs Loki by the chin and forces their eyes to meet and hold. The mahogany depths that Loki’s so many times found love in before, find nothing now. Tony seems to be searching too. His hand slipping away as he strides across the operation room.   
  
    “Yeah. Okay.” the mortal nods, his expression closed off and so very far away and Loki knows, even with his drug shattered mind and battered body, it’s over. What ever delicate bound of trust was built with their love is gone, crushed under the stress of something Loki doesn’t even quite understand at the moment.   
  
    His heart twisting in his chest, aching and stopping in a way that the heart monitor will never pick up. Fumbling to get up even as his body screams in pain and his insides threaten to spill out though thin stitches and staples onto the cold floor.   
  
    “Tony.”   
  
    The word slips from his mouth, tainted with a moan of pain, his arms shaking with the effort to hold up his torso, rattling down though the table and the equipment around him. The monitor an angry jagged line as his heart races in his chest.    
  
    The engineer’s shoulders drop like he’s wilting on his spine, his head hanging a little, brown hair a little mop between his shoulders. “I’d just thought. There was more to us than this. My bad. Oops. Tony Stark should know better than to try and-”   
  
    And? And?! Loki’s heart is trying its best to liberate itself from his chest and Tony just stands there and shrugs his limp shoulders.   
  
    “Are we that fucked up, that you can’t trust me when you’re hurt?” Tony tries a moment later, his voice so unnaturally soft that Loki nearly can’t hear it over the heavy drumbeat of his pulse in his ears.   
  
    He shakes his head slowly no, his breaths coming out in barely chocked back sobs, sweat prickling on his brow and slipping down into his eyes. Or maybe that’s just tears.   
  
    “No.”   
  
    “Then why the fuck didn’t you come to me? Why?”   
  
    “You’re… hurt. You need rest.” He chokes out, aware of how desperate his voice sounds, broken, horse and bleeding like his heart feels.   
  
    Tony turns his back to him, rubbing his hand over his face. Loki can see him rubbing his palms over his closed eyes and scrubbing his hair even without having the visual. It’s the same look he gives a project that’s giving him trouble, something he just can’t quite wrap his mind around no matter how much effort he puts into it.   
  
    “Tony…” He chokes out. Needing something, a response, a look, anything but this damning silence between them.    
  
    “I think it would be best if we had some time alone for a while, away from each other. I‘m going to Malibu.” Tony’s voice cuts across the void and Loki was wrong, the silence was better than this heart shattering dread.   
  
    Loki can’t bring himself to understand why everything went wrong as the mortal pushes out of the operating theater and leaves him alone in the world.

 

**Author's Note:**

> BIG thanks to my beta Becky.


End file.
